Listen

Although Amarok does run sufficiently on Gnome, many users see benefits of using another program call Listen. Written in Python, Listen offers great music organization tools, and supports many features you may be familiar with and some that you may not. Similar to Amarok, Listen offers direct access to lyrics, last.fm, and Wikipedia online encyclopedia. Also Listen will automatically create playlists based on the last.fm content and most frequently played tracks.

Upon downloading Listen, and inserting a new CD, and starting Listen i saw my CD showing at the bottom of the middle window.

After selecting the icon i saw a full list of songs on my audio CD to the right. I right clicked on the first track and selected the Play button which immediately started the track playing also displaying a nice, informative pop-up window on my Linux desktop.

The first option I chose was Lyrics.

While enjoying my CD i was able to look at current information about the artist i was listening to by going to the Wikipedia option.

I was surprised when i clicked on the web radio, selected a category, and instantly heard music. The selection was very good and i didn't experience a bad connection the entire time i used it.

Another pop-up for the web radio showing me the station and track status.

On the main menu under you can import music, create, play and save playlists, access internet radio and the preferences for Listen.

The preferences window looks like the image below

Here we have six tabs General, Library, Audioscrobbler, OSD, and web service. The General tab lets you customize startup, behavior options, and lyric fonts and colors. Click on the Library tab gives you a few music library options including the music library location. The Podcasts tab gives the user refreshing and podcast directory options. Next is Audioscrobbler, which allows users to enable last.fm audioscrobbler support by entering username and password. OSD gives us general OSD settings along with fonts, colors, positioning and display delay options. With the final tab Web Service you can enable a list of web service filters.

In closing, I would like to urge new users to give Listen a try. What it comes down to for me was, installation was easy, interface was simple(much like rythmbox), the music collection options are all there, and even new features like Wikipedia, Web Radio, and Audioscrobbler worked great for me.